Q: How Is Your Super-Shredded Husband Plant-Based?

A: Why Two Competitive Athletes Don't Fret About "Protein"

Thanks for the Q! My husband isn't a pro athlete; he's a competitive athlete, and so am I, actually.

(I'd be playing 4.0 tennis in leagues and tournaments right now if my team hadn't kicked me off for my anti-covidian stance on FB. I’ll get back to it, soon.)

I've been entirely plant-based (well, 98%-100%) for 27 years, somehow without dying of protein deficiency. (Also, nobody dies of protein deficiency. People die of starvation, but not protein deficiency.)

Even plant eaters should take Ultimate Minerals. Because while, amazingly, people eating various diets aren't generally deficient in vitamins, I haven't seen anyone who ISN'T deficient in minerals.

I say this having seen about 200 people's lab results at the Swiss clinic I took people to, 10 times, for sold-out liver detox retreats.

However, many of the claims about deficiencies in a plant-based diet aren't true.

For instance, a large study showed the same number of meat eaters and vegans are deficient in B12. I get B12 from the soil I grow vegetables in, which is where the cows get it. There's a popular claim out there, that you have to eat red meat to get B12.

You don’t, though. Plenty of daily red-meat eaters are deficient in B12, and plenty of vegans (myself included) aren’t deficient in B12..

The main thing I seem to tell people (and they mostly look at me dumbfounded) is that your body assembles proteins from amino acids found in plants.

Just like cows’, pigs’, and chickens’ bodies do, that you might eat. That's where they get THEIR "protein."

So, while it's TRUE that you can put on muscle mass faster, and "bulk up," eating "perfect protein" (which just means "protein most closely matching human flesh")--

–your muscle mass is actually far more durable, built from plants. The bodybuilder look is popular, but that muscle mass is not very durable.

(See what happens to a guy if he stops lifting the heavy weights for a year, or even 6 months.)

Interestingly, in the 5 years that my husband changed from a high-meat-eating diet, to a 98%+ plant-based diet, if anything, he’s gotten MORE muscular, and also leaner.

One-third of the world lives on 95% or more plants. Not because they're reading the works I'll share with you in a minute, but because they're in poverty.

And they don't have the access or the money to eat animals, so they live on 5 or 10 plant foods. (Like the zebra does, on the Sahara, who lives disease-free in fact. The zebra who eats 7 grasses, its whole life.)

And the 1/3 of the world who eats almost entirely plant-based is the same 1/3 of the world who lives longer (if they can avoid infectious disease or being eaten by a tiger or killed by a neighboring villager or starved to death or become one of Bill Gates' test subjects, and unless they're living in a glyphosate dumping ground)…

...they’re the 1/3 of the world who don't get cancer, heart disease, and auto-immune disease, like Americans do en masse.

It's really just industry propaganda that has people believing they need to eat more-more-more protein, and has them believing "protein" and "animal flesh" are one and the same.

We have a lot of problems with the diet on Planet Earth, but "protein deficiency" is actually not one of them. I do not actually eat animal products OR protein out of a bag.

I have written 17 books but didn't write one in defense of the plant-based diet. Why?

Because that topic has been done so well by many others. If your husband doesn't read books, will he listen to a book on Audible, at 1.5x speed, while he works out?

If so, read the works of any of these (mostly MD's, most of them cardio docs): Joel Fuhrman, Caldwell Esselstyn, Neil Barnard, Michael Greger, John McDougall, T. Colin Campbell PhD and also John Robbins (heir to the Baskin Robbins empire).

Or get the comprehensive clinical nutrition textbook with 6,500 scientific references, by David Katz, MD of Yale.

IDK if my friends Joel Kahn MD or Thomas Lodi MD have written books, but they're both 40+-year vegans. If you see enough heart disease, unless you're asleep at the wheel and think heart disease is a statin deficiency--you'll go vegan.

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The easiest thing you can do is sit down and watch the Netflix movie Game Changers with your husband.

The producer is pro athlete James Wilks, and the whole film shows athletes playing at the top of their field in many different sports, including the massive man who can lift the heaviest weights of anyone alive. (You'll see him doing it, in the film. It’s jaw dropping.) 

James Wilks had a health catastrophe like I did, and went plant-based and recovered his health, and went on that quest to make the film.

You'll see a doctor testing the blood of an NFL player who eats a plant-based burrito, and another player who ate a meat-based burrito. I won’t spoil it for you–just watch.

You'll see what many elite athletes have to say about their performance after they cut meat (and dairy and eggs usually) out of their diets.

(Personally I'd rather see people eat animal flesh, than animal excretions and ovulatory products. They're worse, and more inflammatory.)

If your husband did our detox, like my husband, he would see the inflammation from his hard workouts disappear in a matter of days, eating entirely plant-based.

We don't even tell people that the program is vegan (unless they ask). Many people finish it in 26 days and say it's the first time in their lives they've even gone 3 days without eating animals.

For some serious entertainment, after you watch Game Changers, go listen to Joe Rogan host a debate between James Wilks and meat-eating defender Chris Kresser.

It's literally the most embarrassing and entertaining debate I've ever heard, on any topic.

And kudos to you, if you've kept the "love door" open to discuss this topic with your husband, and he’s asking questions, rather than angrily repeating dogmas. Only love wins. Only example and love are the ultimate teachers.

My husband is now about 98% plant-based and his health is through the roof versus 6 years ago when I met him.

He was only 37 when I met him and considered himself in good health, but getting him off dairy also eliminated the "bacne" and belly flab.

We’ve never even talked about “going vegan.” If you asked him if he was “vegan,” he’d say no, and look confused. That word doesn’t interest me.

He loves doing the detox, twice a year, as joint inflammation is his constant demon from the two knee surgeries he had in his 20's after blowing a knee out, snowboarding. Plus the Muay Thai fighting he does a few times a week.

Plus the dairy and meat and junk food and beer he does--which is once a week now, rather than daily, like it was 6 years ago.

We don't have any "rules”--we just love how we feel eating plant-based. I don't criticize him. I just use the "drip method," and get him to watch a movie or share something I've learned.

Or notice out loud, how great he looks, for instance, after he got “off dairy.”

And he's come a long, long way. And he did it because he wanted to. Because every new plant-based dish or habit he tried, he loved the results.

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